Rose+Honey

First impressions: meh, it’s ok. I liked it more at first when I could pick out more of the individual notes like caramel and strawberries and peach in addition to the rose, musk, and cashmeran. I was getting really nice whiffs of caramel at first though I’m wearing Sylvaine Delacourte’s Vanori on my other wrist so I suppose at least some of those might’ve actually been coming from that. Idk though. What I do know is that it’s all totally overtaken by a MASSIVE dose of cashmeran and synthetic musks. Even the rose smells decidedly synthetic, almost slightly metallic. It’s there in the beginning, and it’s already too much whereas the good notes like the caramel are just shadows you catch glimpses, or in this case whiffs, of. It also smells VERY generic 2020s women’s “mainstream niche” (if you know what I mean) or “high end/nichey designer” perfume. After about a half hour or so cashmeran and musk and synthetic dry tart fresh rose are ALL I smell, ok and maybe a tiny bit of spice but it’s pretty basic and inconsequential, just pepper really. Not sure if pink pepper, black pepper, or both, but definitely pepper. It’s perfectly FINE but it’s just so MEH. You smell this kind of scent EVERYWHERE these days, especially at the mall. Any mall, probably anywhere in the world, in 2024. It’s as ubiquitous as Sauvage and Aventus are among the men’s sphere of the same type of scent. The rating makes me wonder who mostly browses and votes on Fragrantica, as a 4.5 rating is about what I’d expect from the non-perfume geek masses, not perfume lovers. Maybe people who *claim* to love perfume and are very passionate about the few designer or common hyped-up niches they have/know, but don’t actually know hardly anything about perfume for real. But I would NOT expect such a high rating for a perfume like this from hobbyists. Look, I totally get that you don’t always need a perfume to be a complex work of art, or challenging-sometimes you just want something that smells GOOD, and there’s something to be said for such perfumes, many of which I absolutely adore, take Xerjoff’s Erba Pura for example. But the thing is that this...just isn’t that good. To be generic is really only a crime if you don’t have other traits to make up for it, such as being really high quality, consisting of excellent raw materials, or simply just being a very pleasing smelling blend, but this is none of those things. It’s generic AND boring, and not even overly pleasant. Unless you really love cashmeran. And the more this progresses, the more purely cashmeran this becomes. And lots of synethic musk. Maybe ambroxan too. Synthetic, dry yet very slightly juicy in a tart way,-emphasis on the tart, peppery synthetically woodsy slightly metallic rose. And that’s it. All the caramel and honey that makes this interesting in the beginning is all gone within 30 minutes. It’s not an offensive scent by any means and it would never bother me to smell it on someone, and if I got it as a gift I might even wear it sometimes, but I’d NEVER buy this. I want to say “never say never” but...I really don’t see it happening with this one. Admittedly I’m not exactly the world’s biggest rose fan, but when it’s done really well rose can sometimes completely blow me away. This is definitely not one of those cases. I LOVE musk, but even as a musk perfume this was missing something for me. I’m not a huge fan of cashmeran, ambroxan, and the like but they generally don’t actually bother me unless totally overdosed, which they are here, but what makes it way worse is that that overdose isn’t at least backed up by some other, “realer”, more “solid” notes (ie not these weird airy, woodsy, musky aromachemicals), which is how I thought these aromachemicals were *supposed* to work; by complementing and enhancing and augmenting other notes, rather than by acting as standalone notes. And I think that that might be exactly what the problem is here for me- it’s aromachemicals and...that’s it. Nothing else. There’s no other notes really, especially not past the opening. Just synthetic musks and synthetic ambers and synthetic woods. Just like the Escentric Molecules series of scents, which btw I am also not a fan of. To be fair to synthetics, really ANY note is boring and does not a perfume make when used alone! Even soliflores contain supporting notes. Otherwise there’d be no point of perfume, just wear the absolute of whatever flower you want a soliflore of, but we don’t do that, because that would be boring and that’s just not how perfumery works! It’s thankfully much more complex than that. But yeah, if you take, for example, jasmine absolute, it doesn’t make for an amazing perfume. A nice smell, but it’s not a PERFUME. Same deal with aromachemicals. You mix jasmine, rose, and ylang absolutes and ok you’ve got a little more of something going but it’s still the absolute most rudimentary form of “perfume” there possibly could be and it’s not exactly going to be smell like the pinnacle of perfumery. Same principle applies when you mix together a few very common aromachemicals together and call it a day, like this. And you know what this is actually reminding me of now, oddly enough? CH Good Girl! Yup, the notes are totally different, but they must contain the same aromachemicals because GG has a massive overdose of those and if you take away the few “real” notes that GG has (tuberose, tonka, vanilla, and a few others but mainly those) what’s left smells IDENTICAL to this. How crazy! And now I know what’s always bothered and confused me so much about GG! Because I really like the tuberose and tonka and vanilla with jasmine and almond but all those notes seem...transparent? Like they’re not REALLY there? Like you’re seeing/smelling a memory or shadow of them, a faint whiff, but every time you try to sniff harder to smell it better, you get smacked in the face with common aromachemicals instead-cashmeran, ambroxan, etc. and the notes you so badly want to smell remain elusive. It’s like taking a drop of a really beautiful extrait, and drowning it in a vat of eau de Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s like a desert mirage, you chase it and chase it but the closer you get the farther it gets. It’s like a ghost or apparition, it looks solid but when you try to grab it your hand goes right through. It’s so annoying because there’s something so nice in there, but it’s so faint and the massive overdose of aromachemicals completely smothers it. So yeah, at least now I know exactly what it is about Good Girl that ruins it for me. But if you love Good Girl you’ll probably love this, because the core of both scents is identical. This has a nice pretty bottle and is not too expensive in general (though I’d argue that for the juice inside it’s way too expensive) but yeah this is a total pass and I could never see myself spending money on this. Wear if you want to smell like every other girl in her 20s at the mall or downtown, especially during the day. This is the kind of scent generic 20 something influencers who post on instagram a lot would wear. If that’s your vibe, and no shade if it is, then this is for you. If not, you can skip this. Unless you really really really REALLY love cashmeran and ambroxan. Despite this being very musky, it’s in a modern synthetic musks kind of way so musk lovers who enjoy scents like Narciso Rodriguez (any of them), SL Clair de Musc, Kiehls Original Musk, Lorenzo Villoressi Musk, Puredistance White, Bruno Acampora Musc, Le Labo Tonka 25, Nasomatto Silver Musk, or FM Musc Ravageur, will likely be disappointed with this thin, hungry, anemic, soulless musk. Most rose lovers will be left disappointed at the equally thin and anemic, ghost-like, synthetic (almost digital?) rose. Think of the rose in Le Labo Rose 31 (which I LOVE btw and smells VERY naturalistic to me), the style of it. Now recreate it in the most synthetic, thin, cheap, unsubstantial way possible, like a hologram, a bad one at that. Or at least, a very un-realistic one. One that looks clearly digital. That’s the kind of rose this is. It has an almost metallic tinge to it, this rose. Especially lovers of rich, deep, velvety, JAMMY roses, who may be attracted to this because of the honey and caramel, as jammy roses often come paired with honey and/or caramel notes. The vetiver too-another common accompaniment of the jammy rose. Well, sad to say those of you will be especially disappointed, as this is about as far from a rich jammy rose as it can possibly get. It gives flashes of being a rich jammy rose here and there, just for a few fleeting moments, in the beginning, but this soon fades away completely and what you are left with is an entirely unjammy rose. I feel like I should reiterate that despite my harsh sounding criticism this is not the worst rose, or perfume for that matter, I’ve ever smelled, in fact it’s very far from it. It’s not a scrubber nor is it even offensive. It’s just so very soulless and generic and synthetic. Objectively it’s a pleasant smell, but as a perfume it’s just not special in any way to be worth $100, not for me anyway.

As usual, I eat my words when it comes to disliking a perfume. My first review is really long so I’ll just leave this as a separate one. I still smell the same thing I smelled in my first review, but it’s surprisingly grown on me. I find myself suddenly really craving those synthetic musks. The longevity is just insane too. It lingered WELL into the next day off a single spray! That which lingered was enticing, making me want to spray more. So I did, this time all over. Now I’m loving it. The musk has a distinctive rice-y or paper-y note/tone to it that I absolutely LOVE. In a weird way this reminds me very much of Chloe EDP, even though they don’t actually smell alike. 10000% the same vibe, but more modern. This is like a Chloe EDP for the 2020s. It’s like Chloe EDP with the rose dialed down and the musks and woods turned WAY up. I actually kind of love it. Yes it’s generic but like I said in my first review, generic is only bad if it doesn’t have any other good redeeming qualities, like being very high quality, beautifully composed and blended or just smelling really damn good. Well at first this didn’t, but now it falls into that last category: it smells really damn good. And sexy. Granted, just about anything musky and woodsy and modern will be sexy to some degree, and this is no different, but yeah it’s definitely a sexy scent. It’s like a skin scent but with beast mode performance, not a skin scent in that it sits close to the skin but a skin scent in that it has that sexy musky clean skin accord. But most of THOSE kind of skin scents are ALSO skin scents in terms of projection, but this one isn’t-it’s a bomb. But it’s an *airy* bomb, not a thick, opaque one like any big 80s bombshell perfume or something like Mona di Orio Musc or Nuit Noir, or even TF Black Orchid. This is airy like MFKBR540, Glossier You, CH Good Girl, or well really any of the ambroxan, cashmeran, and/or iso-e-super heavy scents that are so popular these days. If Chloe EDP was an Escentric Molecules perfume, it might smell like this. Since I ultimately ended up really enjoying this, and am also a big fan of Le Labo Rose 31, and there are definitely some similarities here (while still definitely being distinct perfumes), I would recommend that fans of Rose 31 try this. Not as a dupe, but just as another fragrance you might like or love. I might actually even get a bottle of this after all. But I’ll have to try the 3 Delinas first. Overall this is a trendy and common smelling yet very well done perfume. However, you must like or at least be open to the heavy use of synthetics and synthetic musks. The rose in this is much lighter than the name implies, much like how the rose in Rose 31 is also much lighter than the name implies, which is great if you’re not necessarily a rose superfan, like me. This is a light, easy, wearable rose that you can wear anytime, you don’t have to be in the mood for rose, because it’s ultimately really more about the musks and cashmeran anyway. The rose is important but it’s not that strong. The best thing about this perfume to me is definitely that clean musky skin accord, a little bit of soft fuzzy peach skins thrown in too-it’s pretty intoxicating. I guess I’m finally “getting” it now.

I have at least three perfumes that smell like this, but this might be the best iteration of the fruity-rose-musk-woods juggernaut. I kept thinking I was getting a cedar note, but I think it must be the vetiver. I need to see if I can tell Rose+Honey apart from Rose O1, Delila, and Madame Rose--all three dupes for Delina--and then if I can't, I'll keep one and give away the others, probably on the basis of the bottle, if the juices all perform the same. I like this scent, but it's not my favorite interpretation of the rose. I tend to like a jammier, amberier rose, as in Nahéma. The rose of Rose+Honey (and presumabbly Delina, the inspiration for so many of these more recent fragrances) is fresher and brighter; the rhubarb or lychee or raspberry or whatever fruit top note is on offer may be infinitesimally sweeter here, but that could also be the honey. This is a beautiful fragrance, with excellent sillage, but it's a bit redundant in my collection. I do think the cashmeran musk is a lovely variation, and I tend to like cashmeran much more than some of the more commonly used musks, like ambroxan. Update: Do not overspray this. Five hours in, and it's still throwing like Sandy Koufax. Update: It's insane how strong this is 12 hours later. I could swear I smell rhubarb, even though that's not a note, and the cashmeran is a bit iffy for me. Sometimes it screams VERYCLEANHAMSTERCAGE on my skin. Despite my grousing, I still think this might be the best of my scents with this profile. I'm just not sure that this is the rose I like best. It's certainly no Nahéma, but then what is? It does seem more suitable for spring and summer. I just need to remember no more than two sprays of this bad boss bitch because I'm not 100% confident that she's going to come off in the shower, and I also think this shirt I'm wearing will smell like Rose + Honey forever.

This is an easier to wear delina. I agree with someone below who said it’s a mix between original delina and delina la rosee. Not as aquatic as rosee but more versatile than original delina. I got it for a great price too so I’m not sure who is saying it’s a rip off ... I think it was 1/3 of the price I paid for delina (at a discounter nonetheless versus retail for this one). It’s very pretty and performance is solid. Not sure if this was meant to be a dupe or not but it’s a solid one nonetheless.

This is really pretty. It's rosy and somewhat fresh in the opening, but turns into a floral musky bomb. I'm not getting much of the creamy element others are speaking of, which I was looking forward to- but still it's really nice. Perfect for spring! It wears musky after 45 minutes and that's what projects. If you are averse to musks in any ways, I would caution against this. However, I love it!